Skyrim:Wisp

A Wisp

A Shade

A Wispmother

Wisps are ethereal creatures that are used by wispmothers to lure hapless adventurers in before joining their wisp "children" in direct combat.

Wispmothers are extremely dangerous creatures for lower level characters (roughly below level 20) and for characters vulnerable to frost. They have great perception (rendering a medium to low Sneak skill useless and a higher sneak will be difficult unless the wispmother is approached from directly behind) and can spawn an infinite number of Shades (clones) which don't disappear on their own over time (but will die easily). Wispmothers attack with frost, and are vulnerable to fire as opposed to most other elemental attacks. When a wispmother is killed, all remaining wisps will drop dead and turn into ball-like objects called "Wisp Cores" which yield 1-3 Glow Dust when collected.

Creature (ID)	Lvl			Sta.	Soul
Whispering SpiritDG (xx01A8EF)	1	50	50	50	Petty
Wisp (0002C3C7)
Shade (000F1181)	5	36	224		Lesser
Wispmother (00023ABD)	28	600	300		Greater

• Unique Wispmother: The Pale Lady
• Loot: Glow Dust and Wisp Wrappings

Notes

• The wisps themselves are generally passive until attacked and the wispmother will only spawn if the wisps are damaged, making most of the encounters avoidable.
• Whispering Spirits^DG are creatures of similar appearance found in the Soul Cairn and cannot be interacted with in any way.
• The wispmother cannot summon shades of herself if you destroy all the wisps first. If you don't, they will become shades, and when the wispmother dies, all wisps-turned-shades will not drop wisp cores.
• If you fight wisps on a hill, be quick when picking up the cores they turn into, as they can roll down a hill and become lost very easily.
• The wisp core is technically not a wisp's corpse, but rather a container they spawn on death that is cleared when their area respawns.

Bugs

• Occasionally if a wispmother has summoned a large number of shades, the game may crash upon saving at any time after killing the wispmother. ^?